Taken Away
by DebbieB
Summary: A Dances With Wolves Fic: Stands with a Fist has been running her entire life. But she no longer runs alone.


Title: Taken Away  
Author: MinervaFan  
Fandom: Dances with Wolves (movie)  
Pairing: Stands with a Fist/Dances with Wolves  
Word Count: 1,410 words  
Rating: R (for very mild sexual situations)  
Summary: Stands with a Fist has been running her entire life. But she no longer runs alone.

_The child Christine is running. She hears the woman's voice behind her, always behind her, crying out her name. She hears the boy again and again, always the same._

_"Run, Christine, run!"_

_Christine runs, and she runs some more. She runs until she is surrounded by the grass, by the prairie that was to become her home. The child Christine does not know where she is running to, only that behind her is blood, too much blood for any one child to understand._

_So she runs some more, the sound of the woman's voice and the boy's warning and the word "Pawnee" echoing in her child's ears until the blood starts to hurt as it goes through her veins. Until her limbs become heavy, until her breathing feels like fire in her lungs. Still she runs some more, until her legs can take no more, and she falls. Falls to the dirt, to the prairie grass, an endless welcoming fall that will kill the child Christine more surely than any weapon the Pawnee could use to butcher a little girl alone._

Her movements have roused Dances with Wolves, and he pulls her closer to him in his sleep. Three days they have been traveling together now, and still the ground is deathly cold. Stands with a Fist wriggles against her husband for warmth, blinking the dream away as she breathes in his scent, his warmth.

i I'm afraid of the white man at the soldier fort. I'm afraid he will tell others that I am here, and they will come to take me away. /i

She has asked him, in English, how long it will be until they reach the white men's settlement. He has responded, in Lakota, that he is not certain. That perhaps he has miscalculated. He tells her as they travel, how when he first came here, he found his fort deserted. He does not know for certain if anyone will be at the white settlement.

She watches as he sleeps, knowing he will continue for as long as it takes. Until he can find the white men, until he can talk to their leaders, their holy men, their chiefs. Dances with Wolves will not stop until he has reasoned with the white men.

She fears he will not stop until he fails.

_I've heard they take people away._

His face is set in a troubled expression. She knows he, too, has had bad dreams, unsettling visions, since they left the tribe. She comforts him as she can, telling him funny stories and asking him of his life before he joined the tribe, but still she knows he is worried.

She is worried too.

_Run, Christine, run._

She is worried because if the white men will not reason, the Pawnee, and other enemies of the Sioux will not reason. And soon, even the Sioux will not reason. And there will be no reason left, only blood, in rivers, too much blood for any child to understand.

Stands with a Fist squirms a little, rolling in her husband's embrace to face away from him. His arms drape over her shoulders, protecting, comforting.

_My place is at your side._

She places the flat of her hand over her belly. It has been too long since her last blood.

_Behind her is blood, too much blood for any one child to understand._

She wants to be happy. She_is_ happy with what she knows must be happening inside her. Her Sioux husband had been hoping for a child before a Pawnee cut him down with a single arrow to the heart. And Dances with Wolves wants a child, too.

And she wanted a child as well.

She thought…she wonders….

_Run, Christine, run._

In the white world, Stands with a Fist will be Christine Dunbar. Her child will be white. John Dunbar is white.

Christine Dunbar is white.

_How many white men are coming, Dances with Wolves? Too many to count._

What will this child think, this child of John and Christine Dunbar? Stands with a Fist wanted her child to be Sioux. To know the ways of her tribe, to know the turn of the seasons, the time of hunting, and praying, and feasting, and yes, when necessary, of fighting. She wanted her child to grow tall and proud among her friends and her family, to earn respect and honor through his or her deeds.

What makes the white man move, she'd asked Dances with Wolves. She understood the reason for the tribe's movements. Where the buffalo went, there went the tribe. Where shelter was, there was the tribe. Many generations traveled the same trails to find food, winter shelter, water. It made sense.

Why would the white man travel so far from his home, where he does not know the land, to destroy buffalo and to build forts he then deserts?

Dances with Wolves had tried, in Lakota and in English, to explain it to her, but she felt his difficulty in explaining was more than a language barrier.

John Dunbar no more understood his own people than she understood them.

And they were going to try to reason with them. And they were taking their child, a child she only suspected to be growing in her belly, a child she daren't tell him about yet for fear of adding to his concerns, into that insane world of the white man.

To be raised among white children. To be taught white man's values.

Stands with a Fist felt the tears on her cheek, a hot liquid reminder of her homesickness, sticky against her skin.

_My place is at your side._

She thought of golden kisses surrounded by light, of the first time she came to him in his tent, of the scent of him as he loved her, of their playful and numerous attempts to make a baby together. She thought of the first time she saw him, when she'd felt she could live no longer with the searing pain in her heart, when she took the knife across her own skin and waited, waiting for the blood to finally catch up with her.

_Run, Christine, run._

How he loved her, John Dunbar. How he loved her.

Stands with a Fist leaned back against her husband. He'd carried her back to the tribe, wrapped her wounds in his white man's flag. The blood had been cleaned from the strips of fabric, which had then been reused for scraps. There is no sense in wasting fine cloth, even if it is only in strips.

His eyes had followed her across the firelight as he again told, embarrassed, the tale of the buffalo that had almost killed the boy. They made him tell it over and over that night, and she had not been able to keep the smile from her lips.

She had been afraid to smile at the white man from the soldier fort.

She had been afraid of the white man from the soldier fort.

His breath against her cheek was warm against the cold night air, and she wriggled back against him. She could feel him getting aroused, even in his sleep, and Stands with a Fist suppressed a laugh.

They should have called him "Stands at all Times," instead.

She eased her body slightly, spreading her legs to allow him access. He was still asleep, but even so, his body knew the way to her and soon they were together, rocking gently in a sleepy joining. Stands with a Fist closed her eyes against the small fire they slept near, focusing on the feel of her husband within her. Knowing that, if a baby had not been placed within her, it would be soon.

And she wanted this baby inside her, and when her cycle had completed, in her arms.

She knew that Dances with Wolves would speak reason to the child, would teach their child the ways of the Sioux, no matter where they were. And she would be at his side, teaching the ways of the earth and the prairie and the seasons to their child.

And when the white man came, as she knew in her heart they would, Stands with a Fist and Dances with Wolves would reason until reason was exhausted. And then, in the ways of the tribe, they would move on—to where the air was sweeter, the food was plentiful, the water was cleaner, and the land was still free.


End file.
